It’s not like here in Mexico. You can complain about many things about 7 Eleven or OXXO, but you still go almost daily to these stores that are slowly mutating into reggaeton lounges.
In Texas, convenience stores, especially those at gas stations, tend to be dark, of questionable hygiene and frequently untidy. Think of how many crimes occur in these establishments, at least in the minds of Hollywood filmmakers.
But one chain of stores found a way to turn it around. It’s called Buc-ee’s, it’s in Texas, and what got it into a lure of customers was a relatively simple strategy: have the cleanest and prettiest bathrooms of all the stores in its category. The title came from its customers who spoke out through apps like Gas-buddy. The rest was word of mouth. It’s a revolution.
You’ll identify them by the red-capped beaver logo. If you go into one of these, order the BBQ brisket sandwich and tell me about it.
Today Buc-ee’s has about 48 locations, mostly in Texas. So why is this columnist craving Tex-Mex food?
OXXO arrives in the US
It turns out that the owner of OXXO, which has more than 30,000 stores, is a monster that appeared to the beaver in question in Texas. This company, which operates in South America and Europe, has officially arrived in the United States.
Yesterday it announced that it bought, just look, 249 convenience stores from the company Delek US Holdings.which has them located in gas stations that sell fuel under the DK and Alon brands, in that area of highways that connect El Paso with Dallas. The deal is for the sum of 385 million dollars. Is that a lot or a little?
Let’s take it one step at a time. If OXXO were buying cars, those 249 assets might look like a used delivery fleet.
Faithful to their Monterrey origins, those at FEMSA, guided in this transaction by José Antonio Fernández Garza-Lagüera, took advantage of a possible bargain.
Delek’s business is doing poorly. At the beginning of the year, they reported sales of 3.227 billion dollars, which is lower than the 3.924 billion in 2023, which in turn was lower than the 4.459 billion in 2022.
For that reason, almost half of the financial analysts who follow their shares recommend getting rid of them, according to reports from Bloomberg.
Its main owners are the giant investment funds Vanguard and BlackRock, which also have a minority stake in FEMSA. Both giants will also be giving their assets a clean-up with the deal.
A titan from Monterrey
It is not the same that those 249 stores are managed by Delek, than by FREMSA Proximidad, directed by Fernández Garza-Lagüera, a subsidiary in charge of the operation of the OXXO, the global firm whose origin will always be tied to Monterrey.
From April to June of this year alone, 404 stores were opened that operate not only as points of sale, but also as financial, telecommunications and even advertising services for their suppliers.
The market that OXXO serves in the United States is worth $850 billion annually spread across more than 150,000 locations and, fortunately for FEMSA shareholders, is highly fragmented, meaning that this 30,000-headed global titan could very well sweep up everything in its path.
The company had about $6.653 billion in cash in June.plus 945 million for the sale of their Jetro Restaurant Depot business and another 450 million that they are going to pay them for the sale of Torrey. Are they going to put bathrooms in the OXXO stores?
